I live in London. We have three kids, no car and an electric cargo bike which they can all fit in. It's brilliant and all we need for getting around London. I've also used it for picking up furniture and building materials - such a versatile vehicle and much more enjoyable to use than a car.

Aren't you wary that the bike doesn't offer almost any protection at all when an accident happens? Something that causes minor or no damage when inside a car can easily cause serious injury on even death when on a bike.

I greatly minimise the risks in several ways:

- Planning routes that avoid particularly risky roads or junctions and take advantage of separated bike lanes where possible. This is trivial in a city as there's hundreds of possible routes between two places.

- A cargo bike itself is a much larger and more visible presence on the road than a regular bike. That combined with the visible children on board usually means motorists do a better job of staying clear than they do when I'm on a regular bike.

- Staying well clear of HGVs in ALL circumstances. Once you start cycling in a way where you treat any HGV as imminent death on wheels, you notice how many potentially dangerous situations you avoid.

More generally, I find cycling in London feels quite safe. This is because drivers in London are mostly used to cyclists and generally act appropriately around them. Also traffic speeds are generally 20mph or less.

That's a local minimum. Serious injuries or deaths only occur when a bike gets hit by a car. Bike-on-bike accidents are pretty much a non-issue.

This is solved by better bike infrastructure, and by holding drivers accountable for the accidents. The more people cycle, the safer it becomes.

The ”safer” your car is, the more dangerous it is for everyone else in traffic usually.

Yes. But that doesn't change the fact that given current reality the safety of moving in a car is higher than when using a bike. How it could and should be is a different matter.

This thinking seems self-defeating to me and only serves to uphold the status quo or - sadly - make things worse.

How is looking at reality and making choices that based on that analysis are best for the safety of you and your family self-defeating? You're putting activism into the mix and if you're willing to put more risk on yourself and/or your family to prove a point then it is your choice to do so.

It's not "activism" or "proving a point", it's the prisoner's dilemma. You maximize the global reward (fewest accidents) by putting yourself on the most risky position.

As I state in a sibling above this is not the case it is just how we think as humans. You do a lot more harm to you kids and family by driving them in a car.

I think that is literally the meaning of activism

It's only safer on a per mile basis. Per hour and per trip, driving is more dangerous.

No so clear cut. I almost every city in the world cycling rather than driving will increase your life expectancy. Even when factoring in risks associated with not moving around inside a 1 ton metal box.

Actually being in a car is statiscally more dangerous than doing your commute on a bike, because of health reasons. Accidents are not that important.

The problem is not what happens to a bike or a car in a comparable accident. The problem is that some car drivers somehow believe that bikes don’t belong on the road.

They display two very distinct and easy to notice behaviour:

1. They deny bike presence on the road: They refuse to yield, don’t check their mirror, and run them over as if the bike is not there. When you point out the discrepancy, they just affirm that cyclists have to yield to more important traffic no matter what the condition.

Another symptom of that is drivers thinking that bikes should not be on the road and harassing them with honks, and revving their engine. When they pass them, or on-line, they loudly claim that bikes are not allowed on the road or have a (non-existent) obligation to move away of a far more important car drivers threatens them. In that process, they speed (which is illegal), pass dangerously (also illegal) and threaten people with bodily harm (again, illegal). Retraining, license ban and jail sentences are easy ways to get dangerous people like that to not put people’s lives in danger.

A third symptom is that they claim that “no one” is using bike infrastructure (in spite of evidence like what we see in London) because they refuse to see it. They see no issue with routinely parking on bike lanes or blocking bike-only passages. This complete denial of another humanity is hard to imagine if you haven’t witnessed it, but it’s very common.

2. They have a cop-out of thinking that bikes are “dangerous” because they project their own dangerous and unhealthy driving habits as “normal” and impossible to modify——denying that those habits mean they break the law in several ways. Crash don’t just happen: drivers choose to not pay attention. Actually supportive drivers are not pretending they care: they are enthusiastic about cycling because when they are around bikes, drivers don’t honk, threaten or put cyclists’ lives in danger. And they can’t imagine that anyone would.

It’s very simple for cyclists to be safe: drivers should look at them and thing “This is a human, going from somewhere to somewhere else, like me. I should not kill them.” If they don’t, the cyclist is not the one in danger: the driver is.

If you live within London transport zone 1, it's quite likely to be a zero-car household, simply because of the difficulty in keeping the car somewhere.

That doesn't quite make sense, "it's difficult to avoid having a car because you can't store it"? Can you elaborate? I'm interested what life is like in these cities that charge drivers so as to reduce cars in the road.

I think you misread GP: he's saying that in inner London it's difficult to have a car, not to avoid having one, mostly because parking space is very limited.

What exactly are you interested in, about life such cities? I live in Amsterdam, haven't owned a car for over a decade (which doesn't mean that I never drive one), and haven't really missed it (even with a primary school aged child).

Sorry, just saw this. I do some sports that are 50 miles from the city, and there's no public transportation, not even any private transportation. Skiing is one such activity, but hiking and camping in the summer time. I do recognize that I'm using energy to do these things. I'd love to take a bus. Actually in my west coast city, during the summer they have bus service to a number of area hiking trails, within 10 miles of the city. But these other farther away activities are out of that reach.

Congestion charge makes car ownership easier in that area it is pretty cash anyways. The land is so valuable that you rather fit other things than cars there, e.g. apparments with even more people.

It's expensive to have a car in central London because of the cost of parking. It has basically been unbundled from housing; garages sell for upwards of £100k, guaranteed parking spaces somewhat less, on-street parking is either banned, charged for, or very heavily competed over.

As a resident you get a 90% discount on the congestion charge, so driving it will cost you £1.50 per day. I'm not quite sure whether that applies to parked cars as well.

Car parking for residents is heavily subsidised by London councils, a policy which encourages car ownership. Residential parking permits are very cheap (often as little as £100 or so for a YEAR of parking), where as outsiders coming in to park will be charged a small fortune. [1]

This system discourages schemes that could reduce car ownership, like car sharing, car rentals, etc, because residential parking permits must be linked to a particular plate number.

[1] It's true that some newer housing developments have been approved on a "no parking" basis, which means if you live in that building you can't apply for a parking permit. But these developments are still the exception, not the rule.

Most councils bave residents only parking bays for this exact reason. I live in zone 1 and the permit costs somewhere between 150-200 GBP per year.

I find it a bit funny you mention "lower-class" here. Of the seven first software engineers with kids I thought of, six have one car and one has none.

From my limited knowledge and viewpoint, there is a generational divide, a regional divide, and a class divide. When everything is averaged though, the household income is still the strongest indicator of how many cars you own, and most national statistics prove it.

True, class divide is a real factor: The upper class doesn't own cats (aside from "fun" cars for collecting) but leases them.

Somewhat more serious: Especially here in Germany there is a strong incentive to give cars as a job benefit instead of a pay rises as there is less social insurance to be paid. Thus there is a strong motivation for anybody in a well paying job to get a car. This directly leads to that class divide.

Here, no one owns cats.

The cats have servants.

Cars are a poor mans choice in Europe you only have to have a car if you are really poor. Europe is more mixed economicaly so this isn't true everywhere. Sure if you are rich you are also more likely to make life choices that make car ownership "a must", when you can buy cars like toothpicks it does not really matter.

Growing up my family was mostly a one-car family. I was homeschooled so that made it a lot easier since nobody had to pick me up at school, and my mom was stay-at-home. I totally understand why a public schooled family where both parents work might need two cars though. It would be a pain to drop your kids off at school, drop your spouse off at work, THEN head on to work and then pick them all up at the end of the day when traffic is clogged.

It depends pretty heavily on family situations and all